There are three levels of trust: component, information system, and enterprise.  An overall security strategy determines the controls at each level, and ensures that the controls support each other for robust security.  Each individual component, or device, must conform to the security policy of the organization.  Minimal standards for the security policy of a component include disabling unused services, routine updates, data encryption, and strong passwords, as well as firewalls and anti-viruses as applicable.  Managing trust starts with a documented and management-approved security program. A security program consists of policies, standards, and guidelines that clearly state management’s expectations (Olzak, 2011).

An end user of the organization’s online banking system should be able to access the account information 24/7.  Data must be transferred over secure channels to prevent interception.  Changes to account information, such as a deposit, withdrawal, or purchase, must update to the online account page as close to instantaneously as possible.  Payments, transfers, and money-orders requested through the online interface must be made promptly and securely.  The system should respond only to authorized end users and demand strong passwords.

Information must move across trust boundaries from the organization’s system to the end user’s system.  As it is beyond the power of the organization to control the security of the end user’s system, it is vital to put as many safety precautions in place as possible.  One option is to require additional security questions be answered if access is attempted from an unfamiliar IP address.  The security must also flow both ways, with a method in place to assure the end user that they have indeed reached the bank’s secure website and not that of a phishing scam forger.  One method used is to divide the authentication into two steps, then have the end user upload a picture or phrase which is then displayed once the user passes the first round of authentication, and then require a second round of authentication once the user is assured they have reached the correct location.

While the organization cannot control what the end user attempts to keep on their own system, the organization should ensure all data stored on its system is thoroughly encrypted.   Information should be accessible only via connected to a server, never stored on a component that could conceivably be removed from the organization’s direct control.  Physical access should be controlled both via authentication processes and physical security.  End users should be secure in the knowledge that transactions are monitored and that red flags will be raised at unusual activity.  Alerts will be investigated and audits be performed routinely on these procedures to insure every alert is responded to properly.  The system itself should work to protect the end user from being a risk by requiring strong passwords and routine changes to passwords.  The system should also protect the end user by limiting password resets and locking out the account after a certain number of unsuccessful authorization attempts.  Should this occur the end user should be manually notified via phone or letter and verify identity and authorization before the hold on the account is released.

End users must be able to trust in the organization’s members, which requires proper separation of roles and inclusion in the security policy of processes for handling complaints and termination.  Changes to account management should be restricted to a very small number of employees, and then only during their on duty times in which they are functioning in the role of account manager.  The end user should be secure in the knowledge that an average teller is unable to alter account information, and that terminated employees are unable to continue to access the system either electronically or physically.

The additional benefits of network segmentation, such as improving network performance and reducing congestion, make it a vital part of organizational security.   Proper segmentation prevents a problem in one area of the company affecting other companies.  As an example, if the organization choses to function as a lender for mortgages, applications for dealing with mortgage customers should be segregated from applications for banking customers.  This approach should also utilize in depth defense, protecting the most vital assets with multiple layers of security.  At physical locations, wireless connections should be segmented behind firewall with a separate rule set to ensure that if someone does gain access to the wireless network they must still pass through layers of protection to access the rest of the network.  Network segmentation also limits the ability of attacks such as viruses and Trojans to spread through the system.  Security can be further improved by preventing nodes from being visible to the sections of the network that are not authorized to access them.  Firewalls, IPS/IDS, switches, and routers are all vital areas of perimeter and network segment defenses (Olzak, 2011).

Once the security policy is in place, it should be assessed by an independent and neutral third party to ensure it is robust and free of blind spots.  Routine audits and assessments should be made in all areas and possibly reviewed by the third party for potential threats.

Information stored within the ‘cloud’ should be subject to the same securities and restrictions as all other data within the system.  An update or modification to an end-user’s loan information should be viewable only after ensuring that it is being accessed by an authorized user.

A trusted system has confidentiality, ensuring only authorized users can view data.  It should have integrity, ensuring that data is accurate and verifiable.  It should require authentication and non-repudiation.  Every alteration made to the system should be traceable back to its source.  Data should be protected both at rest and in transit.  The system should function as it is promised to function, removing worry and concern from the end user to ensure that they are willing to trust their money, their identity, even their very futures to the system.

References

Dunn, C. L., Cherrington, J. O., & Hollander, A. S. (2004). Enterprise information systems: A pattern-based approach (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

McNurlin, B. C., Sprague, R. H., & Bui, T. (2009). Information systems management in practice (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

O’Brien, J. A., & Marakas, G. (2009). Management information systems (9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Olzak, T. (2011). Lecture, Week 4. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, CMGT430 – Enterprise Security website.

The role based access control model establishes relationships between various elements of a business process (Olzak, 2011).  A role is a clearly defined position with an assigned responsibility that allows a user to perform certain operations within the system.  Only operations pertinent to the role are permitted.

The human resource information system at Riordan Manufacturing keeps track of employee information, including personal information, rate of pay, tax exemptions, hire and seniority dates, organizational information, and vacation hours.  Though changes to this information are submitted by an employee’s manager, they can only be entered into the system by a payroll clerk.  Training and development records are kept by the Development Specialist, while the Compensation Manager tracks the results of job analyses and compensation decisions.  Worker’s compensation is handled by a third party vendor.

The separation of roles serves to prevent errors, including fraud and malicious action, from coming into play.  Certain tasks, such as altering an employee’s rate of pay, are split into three separate activities.  The Compensation Manager determines the rate of pay, the Employee Manager submits the rate of pay, and the Payroll Clerk enters the rate of pay into the system.   The tasks are mutually exclusive to prevent acts of fraud and to provide a trail for errors.  For instance, if an employee receives a low paycheck after a raise, it can easily be tracked to determine what the raise was supposed to be, locate the form, and determine that the Payroll Clerk accidentally entered $40 an hour as $4 an hour.  This also serves to prevent instances of favoritism where an Employee Manager may give a pet employee a significant and undeserved raise over a more suited employee.  The Compensation Manager and Employee Manager are also unable to modify an employee’s record by adding additional training or manufacturing complaints to otherwise artificially justify changes to an employee’s status or rate of pay.

For determining pay information, the Recruiter, Employee Relation Specialist, and Training and Development Specialist provide pertinent information to the Compensation Manager as requested, who then gives the instruction to the Employee Manager.  The Employee Manager then submits the change to the Payroll Clerk, in writing.  Worker’s Compensation information can also be noted, such as a change to an employee’s availability for work.

Each role only has access to the operations vital to perform job functions.  A recruiter needs to track information on applicants, but it is the Compensation Manager that approves the rate of pay, preventing a recruiter from promising an inappropriate rate of pay to a potential employee.  A Compensation Manager does not get to access information on an employee’s worker’s compensation claims to prevent bias from entering any decisions.   By making the tracking of employee complaints and workers compensation suits into separate roles, a need to know policy is enforced that helps prevent instances of discrimination and retaliation.  This allows for all decisions to be made more objectively and based only on applicable criteria (O’Brien & Marakas, 2009).

A supervisor would inherit the permissions of his or her underlings.  A payroll clerk has the ability to enter changes into the system, and the payroll supervisor has both the authority to enter changes into the system and to approve a run of payroll checks.  To keep a proper separation of duties, the employee manager or operations supervisor should be the only one with the permission to print and hand out checks.  This allows for three opportunities to correct errors and zero opportunities for the deliberate perpetration of fraud without multiple employees working together.

By properly utilizing the principles of need to know and least privilege in role determination, we have successfully eliminated most opportunities for discrimination, retaliation, and payroll errors in this organization.  This removes a massive risk of lawsuits and fraud for the organization, resulting in an improved ability to safely do business.

References

Dunn, C. L., Cherrington, J. O., & Hollander, A. S. (2004). Enterprise information systems: A pattern-based approach (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Ferraiolo, D. F., Chandramouli, R., Ahn, G., & Gavrila, S. I. (2003). The role control center: Features and case studies. Proceedings of the Eighth ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies, 12-20.

O’Brien, J. A., & Marakas, G. (2009). Management information systems (9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Olzak, T. (2011). Lecture, Week [3]. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, CMGT430 – Enterprise Security website.

A suitable Six Sigma project will help the business in several ways, including significant business process improvements and a large return on investment (ROI).

Project Selection Process:

• Identify opportunities for improvement and arrange organizational areas such as production, operations, finance, and strategy.
• Analyze opportunities and group related opportunities together.
• Evaluate and rank opportunities for improvement against the criteria of resources needed to implement the projects and the potential benefits in terms of ROI after completing the projects.

Some project selection methods include:

• Criteria-based project selection matrix, which is awaiting matrix to rate projects are criteria decided by stakeholders and customers.
• Pareto diagram, a prioritization tool known as the 80-20 rule.
• Hoshin Kanri, a method used to deploy organizational strategies and identify projects that will help an organization achieve its goals.

While six Sigma projects are focused primarily on customers other areas of six Sigma projects can focus on are:

• Performance improvement in critical to quality (CTQ) characteristics.
• Reducing customer complaints.
• Reducing defects, in-process or internal.
• Reducing warranty claims.
• Improving surveying customer research scores.
• Effectively capturing feedback from staff members.
• Increasing profits and revenue.
• Audit score improvement.
• Process performance and dashboard metrics improvement.
• Increased growth over the competitors.

The two basic Six Sigma models are DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) and DFSS (Design for Six Sigma), also called DMADV (Define, Measure, Analyze, Design, and Verify).  The methodologies use measurement based strategies to achieve the objectives of process improvement and variation reduction.  DMAIC is used to add incremental improvements to an existing process, while DFSS is used to develop new processes, services, and products when more is required to existing processes than just incremental improvements.

The JDI (Just Do It) method of problem solving is deployed when the rigorous methodologies of DMAIC are not needed for the continuous improvement process.  JDI is a shortcut approach, but is useful when management has sufficient information to bypass or shorten the Measure or Analyze phase.  JDI is also used when the process improvement team wants to demonstrate results.  This can reduce data collection and analysis effort and allow time and effort to be saved by moving on to the execution stage.

The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle is a basic four step process to carry out continuous improvement processes.  The Plan step involves recognizing the opportunity for process improvement and to identify the plan for improvement.  The Do  step is the implementation of the plan.  Employees are trained and activities such as scheduling and following up happen.  If the desired process improvement is not achieved, the plan can be abandoned and the cycle start over from the Plan step.  The Check step involves comparing the yielded results with the planned results.  Deviations are recorded and a new improvement plan is proposed to achieve results.  The Act step involves acting on the results of the check step and then either restarting the cycle or standardizing the results.

Total Quality Management (TQM) is structured to focus on satisfying customers via involving all members of an organization in the quality improvement processes.  The main objective is sustained customer satisfaction, which is accomplished through systematic methods of problem solving, breakthrough achievement, and standardization.  There are no hardline procedures for implementing TQM, and the PDCA is a popular TQM problem-solving tool.

An array is a non-resizable data structure that stores multiple objects or primitive types together as a single object.  It is a sectioned container where each section can hold a single array element.  All of the array elements are the same type and are numbered with a unique number starting at zero, called the array index.

An array must be declared and initialized before it can be used to store data.  Arrays are declared by placing a set of square brackets [] immediately after a datatype, followed by the name that will reference the array.

Datatype[] arrayName;

The square braces can also be placed after the name of the variable:

Datatype arrayName[];

To create an array of integers called numbers, it would be:

int[] numbers;

An array can also be an array of objects, such as an array of strings.

string[] words;

Declaring the array doesn’t make it usable.  It must also be initialized.  Creating the actual array in memory doesn’t occur until it is initialized.  After declaration, the keyword new will initialize the array.  This is where it is necessary to specify how large the array should be.

int[] numbers;
numbers= new int[10];

This declares the variable numbers to be an array filled with integers.  It then creates the new integer array, of size 10, and assigns it to the variable numbers.  It can be done similarly with an array of objects.

String[] words = new String[5];

A newly initialized array is empty, meaning that all its elements are null.  The size of the array cannot be increased or decreased after being initialized.  Arrays cannot have a negative size, attempting to do so will throw an exception.

After the array is initialized, it can be used to store data.  Values are assigned to individual array elements, which are accessed using the array name and the index number of the array element.  To store a value in the first element of the numbers array:

numbers[0]=2;

Since arrays are zero based, an integer array with a size of ten has array elements 0-9.  Storing a value in element 10 or higher would cause an exception to be thrown for this array.  The highest element in an array index is always one less than the total size of the array.

An array of primitive types contains values, while an array of objects contains references to the objects in memory.

Java does provide a mechanism that allows an array to be created and populated with only one line of code.  To create a populated array of strings:

String[] beatleNames = {"John", "Paul", "George", "Ringo"};

This is the equivalent to:

String[] beatleNames;
beatleNames = new String[4];
beatleNames[0]="John";
beatleNames[1]="Paul";
beatleNames[2]="George";
beatleNames[3]="Ringo";

In a static HTML page, the client (or user, someone surfing the web via browser) requests the HTML file from the server, and the server sends the file out to be viewed in the browser.  In ASP, the server can process the file first, adding additional content or customization that will be sent to the browser.  This is done by sending the file to ASP.dll, which parses the special ASP commands into HTML, client-side scripting, CSS, etc…

The resulting page includes only HTML, preventing browser compatibility issues beyond that of standard HTML (or CSS or other client-side scripting).  The ASP also cannot be learned by viewing the source code of other sites, as they are executed on the server and the browser displays only the results.

ASP pages are text pages with HTML/CSS, optional client-side scripting, and server scripting that interacts with ASP objects and components.  ASP code can be mixed with HTML as it does not need to be separately compiled or deployed.  ASP can be edited with Notepad or any other simple ASCII text editor.

ASP is free, though it may require additional downloads to the Windows operating system to turn it into a development platform.  It runs natively on Windows server, and can also be installed on UNIX or other servers with the use of additional software.

ASP Scripting Languages, Objects, and Components

ASP pages are composed of traditional HTML and client-side scripting with the addition of server scripting, ASP built-in objects, and ASP components.  ASP is less complex than a full programming language such as C++ or Java.

One benefit is that ASP can be used with any scripting language that supports the ActiveX scripting engine, including VBScript and Jscript as well as PerlScript and Python.  ASP only uses server-side scripting to produce the HTML viewed by the browser.  Since the server does all the interpreting, the end result is available for viewing with all browsers.

Though ASP is flexible, it is best to avoid confusion and use only one language in most situations.  Examples here will use VBScript.

Declaring the language on each ASP page is a good habit to practice.  This can be done using the <%@ language directive before the <html> tag: <%@ LANGUAGE = ScriptingLanguage %>
Alternatively, the <script> tag can be used to declare scripting procedures on a web page.

<script language=VBScript runat=Server>
 ...Some code here...
 </script>

Commenting is also a good habit, though while HTML uses <!—and –> for comments, VBscript uses an apostrophe:

' this is a comment line

Comments will be removed when the script is processed by the server, so they will not be seen by the client or in the HTML source code.

The ampersand symbol (&) is used to concatenate strings together, such as ‘London Bridge is”&” falling down”.  In conjunction with the underscore character (_), groups of strings that span more than one line of code can be concatenated together.

Variables should be declared, which VBScript does via the Dim statement:

Dim var1
 var1 = HarryDresden

It is best to explicitly declare variables to avoid confusion and eliminate the possibility of ambiguity.  To force the declaration of all variables, place <% Option Explicit %> at the top of the page, just after the language directive.  It demands all variables used on the page be declared first via Dim.

ASP is a modular environment, encouraging the re-use of code.  The ASP Object Model comes with several built-in objects, each with its own properties, methods, events, and collections.  Additional objects are available through the scripting language, and there are hundreds of third-party components available for purchase and installation.